Quick feral question

I have a druid alt and have been playing feral for a short while now, but I have a quick question regarding priorities...

Sometimes I get into the situation where my SR has plenty of time left (30s+), I have 5 CP, my energy is about to cap (~90) but rip has about 4-5 seconds left. There's two ways I can handle this:

1. I refresh rip anyway, despite clipping the DoT by about 4 sec
2. I FB, rip falls off for a few sec

I imagine that 1 is the way to go, but I'm wondering how other people feel about this and whether there is perhaps something I can do to avoid getting into this situation. Like I said I have not been playing feral for very long so it might just be something I learn to think ahead about as I go along.

Hmm, but then you're essentially wasting combo points. Is losing a combo point (or potentially 2 from a crit) deemed better than clipping about 4 seconds off of rip? Does this actually still clip? I read somewhere that DoTs get their damage recalculated when extending, but I'm not sure if there's a certain threshold (in seconds) where that applies.

It's best to have as much uptime on rake and rip, rake almost being close to 100%. However rip doesn't need the same amount of uptime, so FB and start over again. Or you know, can put in a thrash maybe? thats 50 energy well spent i'd say then.

Hmm, but then you're essentially wasting combo points. Is losing a combo point (or potentially 2 from a crit) deemed better than clipping about 4 seconds off of rip? Does this actually still clip? I read somewhere that DoTs get their damage recalculated when extending, but I'm not sure if there's a certain threshold (in seconds) where that applies.

Yes, its fine to waste combo points. Better than waste energy anyway.
Clipping works if less than 2 seconds left. Its very important to keep rip uptime as high as possible, so fb at 4 seconds would be a serious dps loss. Using fb at less than 7-8 seconds will be suicidal to your rotation unless you have tf coming. It will change in the future, but currently our crit is not high enough to rely on it.

Obviously you have slightly better regen than 10 per second, and there is a chance for clearcasting(you should use it for thrash, btw, so no cp), and chance not to get a single crit after 5 hits is pretty low(its around 3% to be precise). But still its too risky.

Ah thank you, that makes things pretty clear.I'll remember thrash, it never really occurs to me to use it in single target situations. Luckily the situation I described in the OP doesn't occur too often, but it's one of those edge cases where I get a bit lost sometimes!

Well, like I mentioned previously it never really occured to me to use thrash in single-target situations. One thing this thread has left me wondering, though... Would Shred still be better, despite wasting CPs? Nice thing about thrash though, I guess, is that you get Weakened Blows (even though the tank should definitely be applying this).

Trahs is about double the dpe as shred. That means when you ABSOLUTELY dont want combo points or dont get any benifit froom them at all you can trash without a clearcast proc.
Your main focus as a feral druid generally is to keep a maximum uptime on your savage roar and dots while not capping energy. If savage roar is fine but rip has a low uptime left and you wont be able to get enough combo points after a bite you should begin pooling energy. DO NOT CAP IT. It is fine for ferals to not use the energy as soon as available as long as you dont lose uptime on something. If you get close to capping and are alrdy at 5 cp you should trash if it is not up yet(or less than 3 sec). If you alrdy have it up you should use shred. Only use as many shreds as you need to not cap energy.

Cool, that clears things right up for me, thank you! I didn't realise Thrash was higher dpe than Shred, so like you guys said, I am at 5CP, 90E, 30+ sec left on SR, ~6 sec left on rip, I'll be going for Thrash from now on as a filler.